Heartland Institute/International Conference on Climate Change (2009)

The Heartland Institute 2009 International Conference on Climate Change, held March 8-10th in New York at the Marriott New York Marquis Times Square Hotel, brought together scientists, economists, legal experts, and other climate specialists to "confront the issue of global warming." These specialists, all climate change skeptics, aim to call attention "to new research that contradicts claims that Earth’s moderate warming during the 20th Century primarily was man-made and has reached crisis proportions." [1] The conference was organised and "sponsored" by the Heartland Institute, a U.S. think tank that in preceding years received substantial funding from Exxon for its work downplaying the significance of global warming.

Documents Contained at the Anti-Environmental Archives

Documents written by or referencing this person or organization are contained in the Anti-Environmental Archive, launched by Greenpeace on Earth Day, 2015. The archive contains 3,500 documents, some 27,000 pages, covering 350 organizations and individuals. The current archive includes mainly documents collected in the late 1980s through the early 2000s by The Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research (CLEAR), an organization that tracked the rise of the so called "Wise Use" movement in the 1990s during the Clinton presidency. Access the index to the Anti-Environmental Archives here.

Funding the Conference

On its conference website, the Heartland Institute states that "all of the event’s expenses will be covered by admission fees and individual and foundation donors to Heartland. No corporate sponsorships or dollars earmarked for the event were solicited or accepted."[2] However, it does not disclose which foundations are contributing to the conference.

While the admission fees are quite high, the Heartland Institute appears to be willing to subsidize the fees of anyone who signs their global warming petition. As described in the Guardian, "the generous souls at the Heartland Institute are offering a special 20% discount on the $720 registration fee. All you have to do to qualify is put your name to the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine's Global Warming Petition, which to date has been signed by 31,072 American scientists, 'including 9,021 with PhDs.'" [3]

Ahead of the conference DeSmog Blog compiled a tally on the funding sources of the Heartland Institute and all the groups listed as co-sponsors of the conference. They found that "over $47 million from energy companies and right-wing foundations, with 78% of that total coming from the Scaife Family of foundations" in the period between 1985 and 2006. In their calculations, the contributors were[4]:

ExxonMobil (1998-2006): $6,199,000

Koch Foundations (1986-2006): $4,438,920

Scaife Foundations (1985-2006): $36,868,640

2009 conference rationale - building on 2008 and the NIPCC

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change led to the production of the "Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change." While the "NIPCC enlisted several hundred scientists from more than 100 countries to work over five years to produce its series of reports, the NIPCC document is the work of 23 authors from 15 nations, some of them not scientists," said Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post.[5] This report, edited by Fred Singer, alleged that "natural causes are very likely to be the dominant cause" of climate change and concluded that while anthropogenic sources of GHGs may produce some warming, "evidence shows they are not playing a significant role." [6] The validity of the NIPCC report has been highly questioned by RealClimate, whose scientists have labeled the report "disingenuous and misleading, if not outright dishonest." On their wiki site, they debunk the arguments, chapter by chapter, put forth by the NIPCC. [7]

2009's conference, with the theme "Global Warming Crisis: Cancelled," planned, as did the 2008 gathering, to call "attention to new research findings that contradict the conclusions of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report." [8]

In an interview conducted part way through the conference with NPR, New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin explained that "what I sense, they're realizing that they have such a varied array of scientific explanations for what is going on with the climate that they felt the need to ... square up their own story in some sense because otherwise they are in danger of losing credibility. What has caused this change? They're not gaining traction."[9] Revkin said that Russell Seitz, who had attended the 2008 conference[10], "felt stiffed and didn't really fit their script". 'He felt a strong sense that there is a political frame of the issue that supersedes the need for the science to be accurate. He was kind of frustrated," Revkin said.[9]

Conference speakers

The conference was to focus on four tracks of panel discussions relating to climate change: Paleoclimatology, Climatology, Impact of Climate Change, and Economics and Politics. [11] The 2009 International Conference on Climate Change website includes three podcasts, one that gives a program overview and two others that preview two of the conference headliners, Christopher Monckton and Christopher Horner. [12]

Stephen McIntyre: University of Toronto; is described as the "primary author of Climate Audit, a blog devoted to the analysis and discussion of climate data. He is a devastating critic of the temperature record of the past 1,000 years, particularly the work of Michael E. Mann, creator of the infamous “hockey stick” graph. That graph--thoroughly discredited in scientific circles--supposedly proved that mankind is responsible for a sharp increase in greenhouse gases."[22]

Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine is described by Heartland as "the curator of a global warming petition signed by more than 32,000 American scientists, including more than 10,000 with doctorate degrees, rejecting the alarmist assertion that global warming has put the Earth in crisis and is caused primarily by mankind."[22]

Conference co-sponsors

On its conference website, the Heartland Institute states that "all of the event’s expenses will be covered by admission fees and individual and foundation donors to Heartland. No corporate sponsorships or dollars earmarked for the event were solicited or accepted."[2] However, it does not disclose which foundations are contributing to the conference.

On its website, it lists co-sponsoring groups, as of January 20 2009, as being:[2]